Disease management services providers typically care for patients who suffer from a chronic common disease, such as diabetes, asthma or hypertension. Therefore, large numbers of patients are cared for with a largely standardized treatment plan over long time periods, typically months or years, which leads to a cost efficiency which is increased considerably as compared with traditional patient care.
Effective cost efficiency is achieved inter alia by the greatest possible automation of the patient care. For example, patient information material is automatically dispatched at fixed intervals or consultancy calls are carried out, or measured values, for example blood pressure, are sent in digital form by the patient to the control center, are automatically assessed there and, if limiting values are violated, notifications with an appropriate recommendation for treatment are sent automatically by fax or e-mail to the relevant doctor or the patient.
As in the case of all highly automated processes, systematic quality control of this telemedical disease management process is necessary here too in order to avoid errors or to discover them in good time. Possible error sources range from defective cables or computers via wrongly entered telephone numbers up to falsification or loss in the case of digital data transmission.
EP 0 917 078 A1 discloses a disease management system, but no monitoring of the function of this system is provided there.
DE 196 51 334 A1 describes an operational test method and a device suitable for this in order to carry out an operational test for a testing system. There, however, it is not the real system itself but only a test system which is run through, so that the errors which occur in practice in the disease management service system cannot in particular be detected with such a test system.